Posted on
Monday 13 February 2012

unbla is proud to support the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology (SAGUF) in designing and facilitating their 40th anniversary event in June 2012 (see http://sagufv2.scnatweb.ch/d/aktuell/veranstaltungen/).
SAGUF is a multidisciplinary scientific society, which campaigns for the promotion and coordination of environmental research in Switzerland. It is especially active for inter-and trans-disciplinary, and applied environmental research.
The SAGUF was founded in 1972. It is a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences SCNAT Switzerland and the Platform Geosciences and an Associate Member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAHS).

Posted on
Friday 17 June 2011

In 2008 we had the chance to design and run a 24-hour creative marathon for ETH Zurich (for details see here). The over 100 participants generated 17 project proposals how to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption at this university.

Not only was this great fun to do; Patricia Wolf* and Ralf Hansmann, both ETH Zurich, and Peter Troxler*, Square One, Rotterdam, studied why the event was such a success. Together, we wrote an article revealing the mechanisms behind unconferencing. This article just appeared in the Journal of Organizational Change Management and is available at this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09534811111102319

While we had to transfer our copyrights on the article to Emerald Publishing, I may legally provide a private reprint over at Square One (direct link to pdf).

Our second paper focuses on the sustainability part and unconferencing as a tool to start it: Patricia Wolf, Peter Troxler, Ralf Hansmann, (2011) “Moving Universities: A Case Study on the Use of Unconferencing for Facilitating Sustainability Learning in a Swiss University”, Sustainability 2011, 3, 875-896, http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/6/875/.

Posted on
Thursday 25 November 2010

On 3 November 2010 an unBla team once more unleashed the creativity of students at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, to find new ways how this leading university could reduce their CO2 emissions. Here is a report in German, and here are the project descriptions (English). A first event of this kind was held in 2008, and we showed in extensive studies why an unconferencing approach works … this paper will be published in January 2011… stay tuned, subscribe to updates via e-mail:

Posted on
Friday 8 October 2010

Bell and King (2010) explored conferences as spaces where newcomers to a community can demonstrate their proficiency as members of that community. To improve conferences, they suggestâ€”among other thingsâ€”to ‘explore other ways of conferencing, like “unconferncing” (Wolf and Troxler 2008)’.

Posted on
Thursday 17 December 2009

The most recent edition of Swiss think-tank GDI‘s magazine GDI Impuls is devoted to 2 letters that have started to change business and society. “Der Boom der englischen Vorsilbe Â«unÂ» kÃ¼ndigt einen Paradigmenwechsel in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft an”. Guess why this is no surprise to us … let us have your answer below…

Posted on
Thursday 22 January 2009

On 13/14 November 2008, unBla was brought in to facilitate an event at ETH Zurich, which brought together 110 students, faculty and staff to develop proposals how the university could reduce it’s CO2 emissions.

The event was co-designed by Ed and delivered by Patricia and Peter. It proved to be a good success — not only in terms of potential CO2 reduction, but also in terms of popularity of the unBla methods with the participants:

A participant survey was handed in by 48 of the 110 participants (44% return rate). Quantitative questions on the overall event, its content and the facilitation methods applied showe a satisfaction level of more than 90% (answers ‘quite a lot’ or ‘very much’ satisfied).

Even more valuable, in their qualitative answers the participants highlighted that they benefitted most from meeting other people through the networking exercise (28 answers), working on own ideas and bringing them forward (8 answers) and experiencing a large group moderation process (16 answers).

They furthermore acknowledged that their major learning gains where from other people’s expertise and generating new ideas in the area of CO2 reduction (20 answers), and also included an increase of their capabilities for working effectively in a team (19 answers).

Without having been asked for it, 11 participants affirmed their motivation to further work on their project after the event.

Patricia, in her capacity as researcher, is currently working on the detailed research results which are to be published in due course.